Corbusier for a good part of his career

Corbusier, for a good part of his career, seemingly showed neither hesitation nor fear of the capacious world out there, which nonetheless was merely his public persona. Immediately after he completed the Villa Savoye, Corbusier undertook the venture, as both the developer and the architect, to build the multi-storey apartment building at the then outskirt of Paris – 24 rue Nungesser-et-Coli (1931–1934), which was to almost cripple the architect financially for the rest of his life. On the seventh floor, Corbusier built a home for Yvonne, his wife, and himself. Despite that it adipor1 was the “penthouse”, peculiarly, unlike that of the Villa Savoye, Corbusier was more cautious and choosy to let light in: reminiscent of the ones seen in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, the clerestory window set up against the ceiling (Fig. 9), along with the skylights and the obscure glass blocks, give the interior serene illumination. The interior itself has several cosy nooks and corners. Semi-circular barrel vaults crown the bed chamber, the living and dining room and his studio, where for thirty years he spent his mornings devoted to painting and writing. These are cave-like internalized rooms. It is quite plausible to suggest that this particular building might have foreshadowed a slow conversion of his worldview, and consequently a different kind of architecture. Between 1951 and 1955, Corbusier completed the last private house in Paris – a twin house for the aluminium manufacturer André Jaoul and his children. The two houses, though still freestanding and perpendicular to each other, are everything in opposition to the Villa Savoye: the rough textured brick wall, the Catalan vault structure with exposed concrete and terracotta titles, the timber infill and window-like fenestration, in direct and rustic manner, and the heavily grounded building itself. The interior, rich in polychrome and raw material ensemble of brick, tile, concrete and timber, is artfully enclosed with careful orchestration of daylight via windows. Corbusier wanted, as he lovingly expressed, to “return the snail to its shell” (Benton, 2009, p. 147). This is, Gaston Bachelard would have agreed, a house of intimacy (Bachelard, 1994, p. 12), whilst the primordial upward axis mundi is subtly maintained in an internalized world. In August 1965, before he died swimming in the sea of the French Riviera at Rosquebrune-Cap-Martin, Corbusier spent most of his last solitary vacation in Le Cabanon, his small holiday abode of a cross-logged wood cabin with tiny windows. This is an ascetic hut, but it is no longer an open, transparent viewfinder. Derived from a complex modular system, which is invisible in its simple structure, and measuring an area of 3.66m2 and a height of 2.26m, the cabin comprises an entrance, a wash room on one side and a room containing two single beds, a table and washbasin on the other. The interior, with minimum built-in shelves, and in contrast to the exterior of partially stripped logs, is clad with wood floor and wood wall panelling throughout. The table, as seen in other Corbusier׳s buildings, is elevating with a single post; the cubic timber seats are without any soft upholstery. The light, admitted in through only a few square and vertical slit windows, gives the hut an amber and yet mysterious glow. “Won׳t this hut one day be that Roman Pantheon dedicated to the gods? ” Corbusier asked when he contemplated the primitive hut and the creation of geometry (Cohen, 2004, p. 63). Not far away from Le Cabanon, there sits the indulgent and idiosyncratic villa “E 1027″ by Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici. It has been said that Corbusier might have adored this building, and was perhaps a little jealous of Gray׳s talent: he was photographed naked when painting a “distasteful” mural on E 1027 without having asked for a permission from Gray. Was Corbusier attracted to its idiosyncratic attention to comfort? Every turn and twist, and every piece of furniture was designed by Gray to cater to her needs! Or, did he actually detest it? We will never know. In his Paris office at no. 35 rue de Sèvres, Corbusier built a cubic timber cabin of the exact height of 2.26m, where he could retreat from the world. Why did Corbusier, who was allured more towards the expansive outside world, undergo the second “rite of passage”?